


Ornithologists and the Unravelling.

by thebutcherscrossing



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 18:05:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8499853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebutcherscrossing/pseuds/thebutcherscrossing
Summary: In which Danny is in an exceptionally pissy mood, baked goods are unreachable and Danny can't stop thinking about Steve's pulse beneath his fingertips.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is completely unbeta'd, for that I am sorry. I also wrote it in about 2 hours and it is largely unedited. I just want to write again so bare with me guys please. Also I apparently have a thing for biscotti because it is appearing in all my fics... I can't explain that one.
> 
> As usual you can find me at thebutcherscrossing.tumblr.com

Danny was in an abnormal state of pissy. It goes without saying that it had turned out to be another 52 hour day, one of those sweat drops rolling down your spine kind of days where you can’t quite shake the feeling of adrenaline fuelled exhaustion and overexposure to caffeine. And what Danny really wanted to do was go home. 

He likes his little apartment. It is homely and calm and he can pretend that the sweltering Hawaiian heat doesn’t exist what with the aid conditioning and all. But more importantly, in the kitchen he is currently stashing a series of excellently crafted Italian baked goods, baked and lovingly posted to him by none other than one Clara Williams. There is a whole shelf dedicated to such goods. Beautiful Tupperware boxes filled with cannoli, brownies, parmesan and chilli biscuits, and pistachio biscotti. Danny, in his heightened exhaustive state welled up just thinking about them, alone on the 2nd shelf, cupboard door closed and collecting dust. 

Why you might ask, are they alone on that 2nd shelf collecting dust? Well that would be because Danny Williams is a damned fool who lets bug infestations just HAPPEN to his house, and allows himself to be blind sided by a case and forgets to remove aforementioned delectables before the flat is locked up for fumigation. 

And so Danny finds himself once again, at the mercy of Steve McGarrett - all round trouble maker and enormous ball of repressed emotion. 

Now this wouldn’t be such an issue normally, Danny would just waltz into Steve’s office and ask whether he could borrow his spare room for the week it would take to fumigate the apartment, Steve would of course agree (not without a few rounds of ‘mock Danny’s shitty home’ first) and then would go about their daily lives in relative harmony. 

Except in recent months there has been an air of something. Not something completely untoward, just a little spark of something under the surface of Danny’s skin - something he is sure Steve is aware of too because he keeps touching his hand to his collarbone every now and then. Neither of them have addressed it, namely because Danny isn’t entirely convinced it hasn’t been there for longer than he cared to realise, and that maybe he feels a bit shitty about only now wanting to acknowledge it after what, like 7 years of partnership? 

So this is a problem for two reasons; 1) this means that after what feels like weeks of hunting down tropical bird enthusiasts with a penchant for human taxidermy, Danny has to retire (baked goods-less) to Steve’s house after one too many arguments with the man himself, a barrel load of exhaustion and a nasty cut to his rib, 2) if it wasn’t already obvious to Steve, Danny had a fuck sized crush on him that he feared more than the announcement that Grace was dating.

Danny sat in the driver’s seat (for once) outside Steve’s house, breathing deeply to steady himself a little before entering the house. The argument they had broken into before leaving the office had been pretty nasty, tempers were so frayed that Danny stormed out, taking control of the one thing he knew would piss Steve off most - the Camaro, leaving Steve to get a lift with Chin. But sat there as the night closed in around him, Danny had begun to feel a bit cruel, the full force of his anger had resided around the point he exited the parking lot outside HQ, the niggling sense of pissiness had remained, but burned with less fury than it had before. 

The case had ended well all things considered. A strange group of ornithologists and rare bird collectors had been stealing taxidermy birds from museums and mansions across the Islands and replacing them with taxidermied human bodies. It had been one of those cases where Jerry and his ‘expertise’ were required to unfurl the complex strands of bizarre that were working their way through the evidence files. In the end, someone slipped up and accidentally released 8 enormous Crested Caracara (a native of Patagonia Jerry had informed them) into an apartment complex not that far from HQ which rather helpfully led the team right to the strange self-proclaimed criminal activists. 

No bullet wounds, no scars, barely even a bruise. That was until McGarrett (who it turns out is a fan of the Verreaux’s Eagle Owl) picked up a frankly enormous bird from the newly raided apartment and brought it to show Danny. This was, Danny is now willing to admit, an entirely innocent move. Steve had only wanted to tell Danny a story about an Eagle owl his sister had tried to liberate once on a family holiday on the mainland. Except Danny had maybe forgotten to take his half eaten bacon sandwich out of his pocket after he hastily stuffed it in there upon receiving a tip off about the Crested Caracaras. A fact which McGarrett’s owl became very interested in, then upon the highly predictable flapping of Danny’s arms had become intensely distressed and aggressive.

All in all, the owl was hastily removed from Steve’s arm, the paramedic already on scene bandaged up Danny’s freshly acquired slice to the ribs and Kono and Chin stifled laughter in the name of desperately wanting to keep their jobs and preferably their lives.

The argument had begun while Danny sat on the step of the ambulance, shirt open for the paramedic to clean and tend to the wound, summarising to no one in particular the ways in which his life was clearly a bleak French satire. A fact of which was not helped by Steve beginning to laugh slightly hysterically at the turn out of events. Danny had been staring pointedly at the floor trying to calm himself, therefore Steve hadn’t seen the look of stone cold pissed he had been displaying, a look which made itself very apparent when he raised his eyes to meet Steve’s. The laughter stopped. 

“Danno, look I know what you are going to say so spare it. ‘You are a menace, an honest to god, sure as they come, human disaster. A man who brings wanton destruction around with him in his carryon luggage just so that he can experience the adrenaline rush of his abandoned career wherever he goes’ yeah I get it Danny, but you have to admit the bacon sandwich may have been your fault.” The slight curvature of Steve’s right eye brow, curating a look of gentle skepticism had signalled to Danny that Steve had believed he had got away with this one. He had no idea how deep this went.

“Right.” Danny replied tritely, buttoning his shirt up as he bore holes into Steve’s retinas. Then stood up and walked to the car in silence. 

And that moment, that moment told Steve he was fucked. 

Because everyone on the god damn island knew that when Danny Williams was screaming at Steve, the world was spinning on the same axis it always did, the moon was just the right distance away from the earth so that tidal waves wouldn’t surprise any holiday makers on their expensive package holidays, that when Danny Williams expressed sincere disappointment in Steve’s behaviour in front of a large crowd of people, it was because he cared. But silence. Silence spelled disaster. 

And silence was the soundtrack all the way back to HQ, Chin and Kono nervously sat in the car in front, frequently checking the rear mirror to see if words were being exchanged. But nothing came.

It was about midday when they got back to HQ, and Danny spent the next four and a half hours in his office glaring at his computer screen and typing in a disturbingly controlled manner, Chin and Kono finding excuses to walk past his office to check he was still alive. 

Then when the clock hands struck 4.30pm, Steve found himself unable to take the pressure any longer and burst into Danny’s office and in the process knocked the handle off Danny’s door. Which was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Without going into to scriptural detail, the attack was pretty nasty on both sides, a choral delight of raised voices, age old criticisms and some inventive new nicknames.  
You see, there was a very strict way in which Danny and Steve normally argued, involving raised voices and a process of inching their bodies closer with each barb thrown. Kono and Chin were able to accurately predict when a fight would end to the nearest second, simply by observing how close their bodies got to one another. But this time, Danny stayed behind the desk, and even when Steve began moving forward Danny had stayed stock still. They were in thoroughly unchartered waters, both wanting to reach out and make it good again, but holding too much resentment to do so. So Danny had left, left the office with nothing but his keys, wallet and phone. Left Steve stood by the doorway with a broken door handle in one hand and a faint ‘Danno’ on his lips. 

Danny had no idea what Steve had done in the last 5 hours since they saw one another. Danny had driven to Chin’s house, sat on the porch step and waited for him to return. Chin, god bless his soul, didn’t say a word, just let him in and then gathered his surfing stuff and went off to the North shore leaving Danny to his thoughts. 

The problem was, that Danny’s thoughts were mainly occupied by Steve. He was completely unable to escape the man. His physical presence was so complete and so mesmeric that Danny found himself reaching out to touch a piece of exposed skin more often than he would care to admit, only realising 30% of the time and managing to pull his hand back. The remaining 70% were the most torturous, because then Danny had a palpable lasting memory of how Steve’s skin felt beneath his finger tips. Always warm, often running too hot, often bringing into question the cost of Steve’s dedication to the job. Sometimes Danny hit a pulse point, the cupping of a hand to Steve’s jaw where Danny’s touch found its way behind his ear, to the slow throbbing of blood against flesh. That was doubly painful, he not only had to contend with the memory of Steve’s blood coursing and beating a familiar rhythm against the pads of his finger tips, but Steve’s face always contorted itself into the look that he reserves for unspoken moments like these ‘What are we doing?’. 

After a good few hours staring at Chin’s floor, listening to the quiet of his unmoving house, the dull tick tick tick of the plumbing through the old pipes, Danny came to a decision. The smog in his head had parted enough for him to see the argument for what it was, a wild contagion of sleep deprivation and unresolved sexual tension. The tide hadn’t broken, but he predicted it would in the near future, it had to.

—-

The porch light was on. Steve must have left it on for him. What a bastard. He clambered achingly out of the car and made his way to the house, lethargic footsteps and the dull miasma of Hawaiian heat whirling around his skull. All was quiet on the Western front, no movement came from the living room and as loath as Danny was to admit it the house had an air of calm about it, and air of comfort, and air of home. And wasn’t that dangerous territory? 

He stumbled into the kitchen to find a clean plate and cutlery enough for one person, and a small hand written note on the back of what could indeed be case notes. Danny’s hand went straight to Steve’s curled hand writing, tracing the lines of his nickname at the top of the page.

‘Danno, 

We can talk in the morning, but don’t be an idiot so please eat, dinner is in the oven.  
Then come upstairs and get some sleep.

Steve x’

The oven contained Shepherd’s pie and the fridge, a beer. Both of which Danny gulped down in a daze of gratefulness. Then slipped the dirty plates into the sink, his shoes abandoned haphazardly at the door (in a way Steve was sure not to like) and began to make the goliath journey up the stairs to bed. He stood in the door way of the guest bedroom, the one that was directly opposite Steve’s room, of which the door had been left wide open - out of character for Steve - and as he began to unfurl his tie from around his neck he felt a great pull towards his best friend. 

Danny took one of Kamekona’s enormous t-shirts from the back of the chair by the door, smelling gloriously of his partner and the sea - a wistful note that pissed Danny off internally (who smelt like the sea?!) but exhaled away the thought into the atmosphere. He stripped to nothing but his boxers and the mustard yellow offensive item, pulled back the covers and slid beneath the sheets. Steve barely stirred, except to turn his body to face Danny’s and curl around him protectively and whisper ‘finally’ to no one particular.

It had been a shit day, a shit week, maybe even a shit month. But Danny felt the physical toll of that begin to melt into nothingness as Steve began to stroke small circles down his side with his thumb, careful to avoid the bandage. 

“I’m really sorry” came a voice from the dark, layered over the sound of skin touching skin slowly. An admission of guilt and an apology for so much more than just a simple argument. 

“Don’t worry about it Danno, we both made mistakes but we can talk about it tomorrow”, Steve replied, tilting Danny’s head just a little and kissing him. Danny felt a comforting rush of heat across his body, a familiar ‘finally’ and a release of tension that maybe he had been holding a little too long. They kissed like that, soft and lazy for a few minutes, Steve continuing to rub soft circles into Danny’s skin as they did so, until both of their eyes began to fall heavy. 

Wordless, they fell into the kind of sleep that is disorientating to wake up from. But they could leave that until tomorrow, there was a lot to talk about and probably a lot of catching up to be done. And at some point, baked goods to collect.


End file.
